


i will sing no requiem tonight

by magnvseffect



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Canon Era, Canon Timeline, Gen, Ruin and Rising Spoilers, david is also there for 0.5 sec, mentions of past emotional abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 04:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11246649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnvseffect/pseuds/magnvseffect
Summary: Who had tended him?I wondered, feeling an ache rise in my throat.Who had combed his dark hair back so neatly from his forehead? Who had folded his graceful hands on his chest?Genya, and her last moments before the funeral.





	i will sing no requiem tonight

Understandably, no one wanted to get close to the Darkling’s body.

  
She could understand their fear. Genya found herself eyeing the corpse all too often, her eye drifting back to it as if drawn by a string, as if she was afraid he would suddenly rise and bring his hand down at her in that too-familiar vertical motion, finishing the nichevo’ya’s work. A fool’s thoughts, but she could not help herself. She’d seen it happen, seen him die. Was that not enough?

  
“Someone has to clean him up for the funeral,” one of the Soldat Sol said. The crowd shifted on their feet, but no one stepped forth to volunteer. The silence stretched on, until Genya pulled her arm out of David’s grip and said, “I’ll do it.”

  
“Are you sure?” He caught her wrist again, his eyes concerned. “They will find someone eventually, it doesn’t have to be you.” 

“What if I want to? It’s what they say, face your demons. David,” her voice softened a little, “I can manage it. If I can’t, I won’t push myself, I promise.” She could see his thoughts whirring, not unlike the clockwork he loved so much. After a few seconds that felt like forever, he nodded, tight-lipped, and let go of her. She leaned forward to plant a kiss on his cheek, then stepped towards the tent. The Soldat Sol guarding it shifted to let her pass ; it felt like stepping from daylight into something new, something she wasn’t sure whether she should fear.

  
The Darkling lay on a stretcher they had set over a table, ready to be carried to the pyre. He did not look smaller in death, as she’d often been told, simply less intimidating. How much of his power had been the Small Science, and how much the sheer influence of his gaze, his stance, his words?

  
“I always thought you would outlive me,” she told the unmoving body, moving towards his head. What if the guards outside heard her? _Let them think me crazy. I asked for this for a reason._ Genya brushed a hand against his eyelids, shutting them for good. Then she opened the small bag she carried, and set to work.

  
First his hair, brushed back with a comb of bone. As she arranged the silky strands of it, she found herself thinking back to her childhood, back when she was still fiddling and experimenting with her powers. He’d let her practice on him then, sitting still so she could bleed black antimony into his hair, darkening it beyond any natural color. Only minor changes, none of which he needed, but she could see herself in his mindset now. The little Tailor taken from her parents, though not without a comfortable sum to go with it. Unique, and therefore valuable. An investment he was watching over rather than a little girl he cared about.

  
Despite everything, she’d loved him abjectly, the way one would love the only hand that had ever showed them kindness. She patted his hair, making sure it stayed in place. 

Stripping him was not enough to make her blush. She was not unfamiliar with the planes of his body, all smooth surfaces and hard angles. Genya had seen him in the banya often enough not to let her gaze linger as she cleaned him up, wiping the dried blood from the dark red wound in his chest left by Alina’s knife of Grisha steel. She wasted no time binding the wound ; he would not need it, wherever he was headed.

  
Genya believed in her saints, in the holy figures wrought in gold. Had prayed to them as a child, begging for protection, begging for a better day. It seemed her wishes had been granted, even after so long. She was not sure there was such mercy for him, though.

  
She folded the bloody robes he’d worn, left them in a corner of the tent. Perhaps they would burn, or perhaps they would be washed, sewn back together and put on someone else’s back, though the thought was strange to her. Someone had left one of the Darkling’s _keftas_ on another table, and she shook it out to see. Beautiful fabric, the lines of gold threading to it in a pattern that spoke of power. A beautiful outfit for a funeral.

  
Moving his limbs to fit into the underclothes and _kefta_ itself was an awkward thing, but  more awkward still was how part of her could not come to the realization he was truly dead. Every once in a while her fingers would flutter to his throat, press two fingers there, like she expected to feel his pulse come to life beneath her hand. But it never did, and by the time she was done the Darkling was every bit as unmoving as before, unmoving and still heartbreakingly beautiful. A beauty she’d come to hate, perhaps, but beauty all the same.

  
She folded his hands across his chest, arranging them until it simply looked like he was sleeping. There was a peace to him now she’d never seen before, as if death had given her a glimpse of the man he might have been instead of the man he had become.

  
This might be, Genya realized, her last chance at an eulogy. The cremation would be much too public, and the crowd would cry for the girl they believed was Alina, an almost-perfect lookalike. She remembered working on Ruby, erasing the tattoo and changing her features until it had felt like staring her dead friend in the face, and she’d had to turn away. Funny how she’d been the last care for both corpses.

  
What could she possibly say, though?

  
“I hate that I loved you, once. I hate that there was a time I believed every promise you made me, every word out of your mouth. They keep telling me it’s not entirely my fault, that I’m not the only person you fooled into trusting you, yet it still feels personal.” It was oddly satisfying to hear herself talk, to find that there was nothing he could do to stop her words from spilling out. “Yet I keep wondering – and maybe that makes me all the more stupid – what if it’d been true? What if you’d truly cared? There will be no one crying for you at the funeral, and even for a monster, I’ve seen brighter things. I won’t be the one to do it, but it seems like a shame to me.”

  
“She’s going to have a good life, Alina. I hope she will. She deserves it, as we all do. In time she’ll stop hurting over what you’ve done, even if I don’t think she’ll ever forget you.” What a way to live in someone’s memory, though. Be remembered with a shudder of fear, as a bedtime story to tell misbehaving children. Or perhaps no one would take the risk ; perhaps they’d all scare themselves into silence, and he would fade from everything but history books. “And we…” Genya took a deep breath. “We’re going to rebuild the Second Army. Free the Grisha, as you wanted. Wonder what you’d say to that. There’s going to be a triumvirate. All three orders, cooperating. mixing with _otkasat’sya_. Maybe they’ll call me _moi soverennyi_. who am I kidding? No, they won’t, I won’t let them.” She adjusted her shawl on her head, took a shuddering breath. “I hope you come back, someday. Some of the Shu believe our souls walk in circles, that every one finds their way back here eventually. I hope yours does it, and that you’re born in Ravka again as a united country, a strong country. I want you to see what you lost, even if you don’t remember.”

  
Genya smoothed out an invisible wrinkle on the sleeve of his _kefta_. “So this is goodbye,” she finished. “Farewell. Whatever you call it. I won’t miss you none.” As her hand came to rest on the flap of the tent, she turned back one last time, opened her mouth and, finding nothing else to say, rushed back out towards the sun. Towards David waiting for her, towards the life she still had while his had ended.

  
_I’ll have a good life, too. Won’t that make you mad?_

**Author's Note:**

> this relationship is unhealthy as hell, And Yet. kudos and comments are always appreciated. hmu on @andpegs on tumblr!


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